


Not On Drugs

by arcadevia



Category: SK8 the Infinity (Anime)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Blood and Injury, Cuddling, Fluff and Angst, Friends to Lovers, Hemophobia, Hurt/Comfort, Insecure Kyan Reki, M/M, Mutual Pining, Napping, POV Alternating, Pining, Skateboarding
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-02-18
Updated: 2021-03-02
Packaged: 2021-03-13 20:07:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 5,206
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29531721
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/arcadevia/pseuds/arcadevia
Summary: “Look at me,” Reki says, somehow answering Langa’s need for a decision. His friend grips his wrist at the edge of his vision and leans closer, the other hand brushing back strands of thin wispy hair that the night breeze has blown into a frazzled mess.“Just look at me, Langa.” Reki says again, but Langa is staring at the speckled black sky and tries not to think about black blood.(There’s a natural, common phenomenon in which the world gains its whole colors for those who manage to connect with another particular person. Supposedly, theirsoulmate.)
Relationships: Hasegawa Langa/Kyan Reki
Comments: 26
Kudos: 322





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Trigger Warning: blood, hemophobia (fear of blood), and implied panic attacks
> 
> title from ‘not on drugs’ by tove lo cause i’ve been listening on repeat lately

Every breath Langa sucks in comes in short staccatos, like a cat scampering across a piano and leaving an awful, fumbling tune in its wake. He’s had this feeling before, enough to understand how rattling this phobia has become for him, and every time it comes around he feels like a child again. Between wandering outside, tip-toeing around a bush, and trying to scoop up the neighborhood’s stray cat, Langa’s first experience with blood had come flowing from a nasty slice down his lip. The cat wasn’t friendly, and when little Langa frantically looked down to his empty hands, steadily growing wetter with every thick drop hitting his skin, he’d shrieked so loud that a cluster of birds shoved themselves to the treetops and away from such a horrendous noise.

He’s seventeen with a needle-thin scar now, and if one looked close enough, the small hatches from each stitch across can be visible too.

Reki calls him dramatic when those spurts of panic come out after getting scrapes from the asphalt, but he patches him up every time, without fail, and by the end of it Langa’s eyes have settled away from his mildly disturbing wound and rather onto the person tending to it.

_“You’ll get used to it,”_ Reki’s told him before, and he’s started to think he actually was until… until—

“Hey— Hey hey, Langa— _Langa_ ,” Reki says urgently, and quite literally has to straddle Langa on the ground to stall his painful squirming and take hold of the offending hand pooling up the same thick wetness Langa dreads with his whole heart.

Every beat from his pulse sends a shocking burn to the surface of his palm, he wonders if there’s debris stuck there, if Reki is only going to these lengths because it really _is_ as bad as it looks. _Dark_ , dark enough to wince at even though it matches plenty other shades of the only black he’s ever seen. It’s the pain that makes it scary, he hates to see the dull and pale grey of his skin and imagine —more like _know_ — there’s something grave oozing underneath.

“Rek—“ Langa winces. His hand is quivering and he doesn’t know whether to risk a glance and try settling his worries or if this time, it’s better left unknown.

“Look at me,” Reki says, somehow answering Langa’s need for a decision. His friend grips his wrist at the edge of his vision and leans closer, the other hand brushing back strands of thin wispy hair that the night breeze has blown into a frazzled mess.

“Just look at me, Langa.” Reki says again, but Langa is staring at the speckled black sky and tries not to think about black blood.

Something gets through though.

“Sing the alphabet for me.”

That’s stupid, he can’t sing. But his lips are moving anyway and each time his hand stings he chokes out a letter and his toes curl. Reki’s hand is sliding up his wrist, gradually, and after one last brush along Langa’s cheekbone, he uses the other to tug off his headband, that whole flurry of hair going somewhat limp and framing a focused face.

“K— L— M—“ he struggles, but he’s still just as panicked as before, and although Reki holds every ounce of trust he has, there’s nothing that can’t keep him from looking just once because his hand is hovering _right there_ and Reki’s headband hasn’t reached it quite yet and it’s building it’s getting worse it’s definitely getting worse—

“O— P— Q—“

He looks.

_“AGH!”_

“Langa!” Reki startles with the headband tight in his clutch. “What did I say?! Just—“

Langa feels like a startled wolf now— or cat, the one he encountered that slashed at him in a moment's notice all those years ago. His wild stare flickering around his surroundings and tuning into micro sights that send a thrill through his body. Things feel foreign all at once when he makes the connection, a blink-and-you-miss-it experience where when he once saw dull shadow, it’s replaced with— with something else. The street signs, the graffiti, sleeves of his friend’s shirt and… and…

It feels like jamais vu, where his gaze jumps from his hand, sporting a nasty gash that glints under a streetlamp, to his friend, wide eyed and frantic with those tufts curtained along his forehead.

They're the same shade, the same… color. Two opposite sides of a single spectrum, where one of the worst sights somehow coincides with the most comforting to him.

“R…” he feels his mind blanking out, vision going blurry from another wave of shock.

The color of blood, and Reki’s hair, and countless other things he has yet to discover—

is red.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (Langa only knows the color is red because it’s still common knowledge. Blood is red, grass is green, etc etc)


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It’s about time he takes note of his friend’s ways though and just stop looking. Not like it’d make a difference if he continued anyway, the closest he’d ever been to connecting with someone enough was a childhood friend who had moved away a couple years ago and now…
> 
> “What?” Langa asks.
> 
> Reki feels himself blush at the idea. Yeah, _Langa_.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> edit: accidentally wrote ‘lance’ at one point... please shoot me

There’s a natural, common phenomenon in which the world gains its whole colors for those who manage to connect with another particular person. Supposedly, their _soulmate_.

Or something like that.

Reki’s heard plenty of rumors and theories behind this sort of stuff, how it could take a split second to a whole lifetime before unlocking whatever lies beneath the population’s collective curtain of white, grey, and black. He remembers going through phases, on and off, of feeling so utterly desperate at the idea of _color_ . Because what he sees now is an arguable example of it, people say it lacks— uh, what is it… _“Vibrance”_ or _“saturation”_.

Online, he’s found mind blowing amounts of articles and videos claiming their own shortcut to these discoveries. It’s ridiculous, but for years he just couldn’t shake the delusion that it was possible, that he could simply cut to the chase and see the world the way it is when you’re in… um, love. Platonic or romantic, he’s heard it varies and that pairs of best friends see the same as lovers.

He also hears of unrequited cases.

But it’s all a load of crap, the articles, like searching _‘How to make fire without heat’_ , it’s just _‘How to see color without a soulmate’_.

He’s heard plenty of testimonies on certain methods, which like eighty percent of them contain drugs or alcohol because of _course_ you’d be in your right mind to know what you’re seeing when you’re _intoxicated_.

He’d tried it anyway. At sixteen with a bottle that was hidden at the back of a kitchen cupboard and he only vaguely recognized the brand name. He’d heard it from his classmates, something about their wild nights spent together at bonfires and whatever kids who wanna be cool do these days.

The drink was disgusting, he’d sprained his elbow in the midst of drunkenly stumbling back to his bedroom, and the trip to the ER that evening was spent in shameful silence in the passenger seat and a stupid, _stupid_ black and white view of the road ahead. Longest lecturing of his life from his mother when they’d gotten back home.

Maybe he was scared of never meeting that person— _the_ person, or spending so long without them that he’d only manage to see color at the tail end of his life, looking at the grassy lawn outside his retirement home or something. Just something sad, he doesn’t want it at all.

_“I never bothered looking, honestly.”_ He remembers Langa shrugging indifferently.

_“That’s because you don’t need to,”_ Reki had said with a grumble and glared at the few crumbs of fries he had left. _“Everyone already likes you. Your soulmate’s probably gonna fall right into your hands soon, I bet.”_ Stupid soulmate and stupidly nice hands. Langa doesn’t even have to try.

It’s about time he takes note of his friend’s ways though and just stop looking. Not like it’d make a difference if he continued anyway, the closest he’d ever been to connecting with someone enough was a childhood friend who had moved away a couple years ago and now…

“What?” Langa asks.

Reki feels himself blush at the idea. Yeah, _Langa_ , he’s not that much of a dumbass but that kind of possibility is just something to hope for, the way he thought he’d seen glittering pieces of something _new_ in his sight when Langa soared through the air during his race against Shadow. Reki dwelled on it for days, but those pieces were so microscopic he must’ve only been daydreaming and let his heart jump ahead to unreasonable conclusions.

“N-Nothing I’m just uh,” he mutters, and tries to make a convincing show of stretching from where he lays on his bed next to Langa. “—tired. Just tired…” _More like just hopelessly staring at your face._

Langa huffs, ever so familiar with Reki’s shitty sleep schedule, he sets his phone aside before scooting forward to lay next to Reki, eye to eye. His arms and broad shoulders are awkwardly curled in like a kid ready to hear a bedtime story. “You could take a nap then.”

Reki senses something weird going on, because although he _really_ appreciates the close proximity and all, Langa never…

“ _Huh?_ You never encourage my naps, dude,” he says skeptically, but his voice starts to falter when Langa reaches up and takes a tendril of hair that’s spilled over his headband and twirls it between his fingertips.

Reki can only stare. His bedroom is so quiet, with only the white noise of a nearby fan, that Langa’s gaze and touch has made Reki’s heartbeat the loudest thing around.

“They seem to work for you enough, you’re always complaining before taking one anyway.”

“Oh shut up,” Reki says and he lightheartedly swings a leg over Langa’s hip to drag him closer. “I know you wanna fall asleep with meee,” he sing-songs. “C’mon, _say it_.”

“Just take your dumb nap, Reki,” Langa responds in tow, but his tone is distant and that stare is so glazed over it looks almost hypnotized, still playing with the same tendrils of hair as before. He looks like he’s seeing it for the first time, or traces of something, like a piece of fluff that just won’t budge. Reki wonders if he’d somehow gotten nacho cheese there from lunch earlier, wouldn’t be the first time.

But when he glances over there’s nothing. Just a frayed streak of black like a rebellious stroke from an inky paintbrush.

Langa continues to stare at it, a pout playing at his lips the way it does when he’s thinking. He’s got a resting sad face of some sorts, where his expression is muted and glazed over before Reki does or says something and suddenly a look of plain delight splashes across his face. His reactions are prompted, unlike how Reki’s thoughts and expressions go haywire and crackle out of him like sizzling electricity.

_“Re…”_ he remembers his friend dazedly saying, moments before passing out from utter shock at the nasty gash in his hand. It was terrible, there were glittering splinters of glass in his hand and the rest of the broken beer bottle only a few feet away, the smallest streak of blood smeared at its jagged tip.

There’s always a drag of guilt that stays with Reki every time Langa gets hurt. He feels it building in his lungs and clenching his stomach, he’s scared that one day his friend will come around to be as restless as himself from nightmares. Truth be told, he’s tried to make himself fall asleep before only to gasp awake from traces of PTSD yanking at his consciousness. He can’t sleep without knowing Langa is okay, and the most decent rest he gets lately comes from drifting away in the loose hold of the other boy’s arms.

Like now, when he tries to swallow away more of that guilt as Langa turns his palm until Reki’s hair tickles the edge of his exposed, stitched up wound. Langa looks, glances between the two, and he’s almost about to say something until the comment slides away with a slip of his tongue. The scar on his lip bends with it.

Reki acts on a whim. He takes hold of the back of Langa’s hand and tilts his head just so, placing a reverent kiss against the tender skin of his wrist before letting go to curl himself away in the nook of Langa’s neck. His face feels hot. Langa’s hand returns to rake nails up his scalp and it’s the best thing to fall asleep to. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (You can see Langa is still pretty infatuated with the color red.)
> 
> I’ve extended the work to 4 chapters since this seemed like a good place to leave off on <3


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The slightly curled ends of the boy’s light hair, an airy laugh that fizzes with innocence, the feeling of his chin hooked over Reki’s own shoulder, or that scar on his lip bending when his mouth forms a question—
> 
> _“What’s the first thing you’d want to see in color?”_

It makes sense to Langa, probably should’ve expected this, even, but Reki’s impact on his life has been nothing short of a crash and a bang. In the best way, of course…

But he just can’t shake this, and ever since these new, _brilliant_ colorful hues have hit every object in sight and bounced off every wall, it’s only harder not to let something about this slip. Reki is always the first person he turns to with good news— _any_ news, actually.

He can’t say anything though.

Has Reki been seeing color too?

The question has rattled in his mind as much as all these colors have. It’s an honest wonder of the world, and the fact that he’d thought of how ecstatic his friend would be over seeing his markers this way really goes to show how far gone he’s become. He doesn’t fight the feeling, the same way he’s never bothered looking for his soulmate, but that hasn’t softened the blow a single bit. It’s like all those times when the wind got knocked out of him from his umpteenth fall, and Reki’s smile or bubbling laughter were enough to ease the ache. He forgets the pain in his back— at least when his weak heart gets a little preoccupied.

Reki hasn’t shown any signs of a connection though, and he would’ve told Langa the second it’d happen, Langa could almost count on it. The only thing that draws out a twinge of fear is wondering what their connection is based on. Telling Reki about this is a confession in itself, it makes him (or anyone else like this) feel too vulnerable to take the fall. Telling someone you see color because of them means admitting you’re emotionally connected, that they were meant to be in your life, that you’re _in love_ on some sort of level whether platonic or romantic and it’s just—

It’s just overwhelming.

So he stays quiet while he can as Reki curls close and snoozes away on his chest. The sunlight from the bedroom window beams right on the crown of his friend’s head, turning his dark hair into a gleaming red halo. It’s not muted this time, no highlights of grey and white, it’s other shades and… stuff. He’s getting used to it, and in all honesty he can’t say he even knows the color of his shirt right now, just that it looks good with Reki’s smooshed cheek pressed against it.

Blood is red; Reki’s hair is red. Grass is green, so his homework folder must be. The sky is blue— oh yeah, did he mention his _hair_ is blue?

Maybe he’s an idiot, but people have told him the color of his hair before, he just never bothered believing it. Joe had said it before and he simply assumed it was a joke, but then Cherry’s tame confirmation had followed and suddenly Reki was tugging at strands with eyes wide and enamored, babbling on about how lucky he was.

Needless to say, his reflection was just as much of a trip as the first reveal.

 _Reki doesn’t know how lucky_ **_he_ ** _is_ , Langa thinks as he gently moves his hand to the boy’s soft cheek. He looks even more human this way, with freckles and tinges of pink from faded blemishes, and he’s come to realize that even the tiniest things have a hint of color, perhaps it’s even vivid. Like irises. He still doesn’t know what the color of his friend’s is called but they’re rich enough to look priceless.

_Reki…_

He sweeps away the strands that fall across the boy’s forehead, and just the way a kiss was placed to his wrist before, he presses his lips to Reki’s skin as his own kiss to give in return.

_Do you see this too?_

  
  


Ever since elementary school, Reki has become all too familiar with a certain question that becomes hot gossip the moment you find out about soulmates and the sights that lay ahead.

_“What’s the first thing you’d want to see in color?”_

It was tough, for some people, but Reki knew what his answer came to be.

He wanted to see himself.

Of course, it sounded too selfish. So he’d try hiding away with all the other meaningful answers there was and just say he’d like to see the sunset. It was general enough, and people had mentioned its soul-shaking beauty, an amazement that never seems to fade even as one’s familiarity with color continues on. He still sees it in his mother’s calm expression when she looks out the window, her damp hands and chopped vegetables momentarily forgotten for just a few breaths. He bets he’ll be just the same, some things just never grow old, the excitement from skateboarding tells him that much.

But he doesn’t want to see himself for the same reason as everyone else and their respective wishes. He’s all too humbled by now, and well aware that color probably doesn’t make things much better but he just wants to know…

Does he really look that bad?

In junior high school he’d gone to his very first birthday party that invited girls over. He was a flustered mess, before and during, constantly keeping his sweaty hands balled up in the pockets of his cargo shorts and trying not to look like too much of a doofus in general. The girls were _really_ cute, one was in his art class too, and he’d always contemplate walking over to her table and asking to borrow a marker or something but it was just too much. At least to his little 13 year-old heart.

He can’t remember how the topic came about, but while everyone was crammed together in a little social circle in his friend’s living room, a couple of other kids had shared about being able to see color from recent soul connections. One was his classmate, the other was a girl he didn’t know.

Everyone was buzzing with questions, giddy for answers from real people while they had the chance. It wasn’t often you’d find someone connected at their young age.

Well it was stupid. At least that’s what he’s told himself over and over since coming home from that party with the most humiliated feeling burrowed deep in his stomach.

_“Tsch, yeah, Reki’s hair actually makes him look like a clown.”_

Reki straightened. _“Dude what? No way! Is- is it the same—?”_

_“Yeah it’s all red it’s the same color, even the dots on your face too.”_

_“Oh my god, the dots?”_ One girl asked incredulously. _“Ew that's so weird. Do I have any?”_

_“No you’re fine.”_

You’re fine.

Reki knew he had breakouts at that age, but no one ever told him they were— they were _red_. They didn’t seem all too bad when everyone else saw his little blemishes the same muted way that he has, yet he’d always been jealous of people with even slates of plush skin, no discoloration and “perfectly” solid. Practically everyone at that party had been that way, he should’ve known.

It was awful. He couldn’t look in the mirror without a sense of resentment, yet always told this stuff was _“normal”_ for his age. Well if it was normal, why is he being made fun of?

He was rarely ever seen without a headband since then, didn’t look in the mirror without it covering his forehead. His hair grew long enough to do the job too and yet the habit just stuck, even after the blemishes eventually faded and his breakouts weren’t _“all that bad”_.

 _I’d want to see myself_ , Reki would always think when it came down to it.

But eventually, something shifted.

He made a new friend and wasn’t alone anymore. Time at the skatepark wasn’t time spent feeling self conscious, and Langa grinned at him all the same after a nailed trick, whether Reki had an annoying zit on his face or not.

Langa’s indifference to shallow stuff is all Reki had ever wished for himself. Very few things made the boy tick, like blood, the same color as…

Doesn’t matter.

Because the more he’s looked in the mirror recently, the less he’s paid attention to himself— it’s someone else. He comes home so high off giddiness that the thought of Langa clouds over all these old insecurities.

The slightly curled ends of the boy’s light hair, an airy laugh that fizzes with innocence, the feeling of his chin hooked over Reki’s own shoulder, or that scar on his lip bending when his mouth forms a question—

 _“What’s the first thing you’d want to see in color?”_ Langa asks, his hands holding Reki’s as he continues shuffling backward. Their shoes brush against flower stems, and their leaves and petals tickle his bare ankles form where his pants are rolled up.

There’s bundles of clouds sprawled across the sky, stretching toward the horizon, mountains and lakes and Langa is still holding onto him even when he stops walking.

 _“What would you wanna see, Reki?”_ he asks quietly, but there’s nothing around them that makes a sound anyway.

Their foreheads touch, noses bump, Reki wants to say he feels his friends lips brush against his but that’s just wishful thinking.

 _“You,”_ he says.

And the word echoes from his mouth even outside of the dream.

The real world comes together in a great mesh of startling color from where he still lays on his bed. He barely recognizes where the hell he is and almost thinks he’s still dreaming.

There’s a hand on his. Limp, unmoving, and certainly not grey anymore. His heartbeat picks up as his eyes trail over his friend’s chest, swathed in a _far_ more foreign color than the black Reki was convinced it’d been before falling asleep, then up to his face. He swallows.

“You…”

Langa is fast asleep when Reki sees blue for the first time.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> back in middle school i had acne :/ at the time i was really insecure and would get picked on a lot, so i wore a folded up bandana every day for years until it became my “thing”. i’ve grown out of it but when i saw reki and his headband i thought of that time, along with overhearing some shitty soccer teammates talk abt not wanting me on the team. this is probably the most i’ve related to a character honestly so if you’re wondering why there’s more writing in reki’s narrative there you go 💀


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Luckily, Langa still finds himself within close proximity to his friend, close enough to reach his arm behind him, where the other sits, just to feel Reki’s fingers tangle with his own. They’re hidden under the shadow of the desk, but Langa knows people whisper, the students who sit in the back rows too.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Stretched this fic to 5 chapters (please don’t kill me) so I could publish what I’ve got so far since writers block suddenly hit. Didn’t wanna leave yall hangin for too long 😬
> 
> warning: some brief homophobia is mentioned in this chapter

Their seating in the classroom has been rearranged.

Luckily, Langa still finds himself within close proximity to his friend, close enough to reach his arm behind him, where the other sits, just to feel Reki’s fingers tangle with his own. They’re hidden under the shadow of the desk, but Langa knows people whisper, the students who sit in the back rows too.

He can’t help it though. It’s like a routine whenever all the students settle in after the starting bell. There’s a tap on his shoulder and next thing he knows, his back subtly relaxes into the seat and his fingers feel warm and ticklish from the sensation of his friend’s. Maybe Reki doesn’t even realize it, but ever since his spontaneous outburst in the middle of class, chest heaving and eyes terrified from flashbacks Langa can’t begin to imagine, he’s become particularly… tactile. As if merely touching Langa puts him at such ease, like the last tense muscle to loosen before his body settles, the way damp soil does around beautiful _green_ plants, and he finally falls asleep.

Langa knows what fresh cherry blossoms truly look like, now that they’ve been wiped clean of a gloomy, black and white slate. When he sees Reki at peace, he wonders what the boy would look like with those delicate petals draped along his hoodie-clad shoulders and speckled in his fluffy hair. He looks like a flower himself, honestly, with his red hair. The kind that apparently turns bold and rich during this springtime. He’s beginning to think this whole color thing has spurred a particular interest in gardening.

“—Your exams for each subject begin next week…”

Class drawls on and Reki’s hand gradually goes limp. Langa holds on anyway and continues looking ahead. Today can follow all their other days, and he knows that during lunchtime the droopiness of Reki’s eyes will linger a bit longer while he snags food off Langa’s tray (its alright because he’s cute); in the afternoon he’ll be bursting with energy and probably scrape his knees raw from relentless skating; and in the evening Langa will text the notes from class so Reki can at least be occupied when the insomnia sets in.

It’s comfortable, repetitive.

But as he roves his thumb across Reki’s knuckles and overhears the snickers and taunts from nearby, he feels his heart ache for one slight change: to live the way they have been, but _together_. As… a couple. Soulmates.

_“Tsch, no wonder he’s such a weirdo. He’s gay.”_

Right. Despite the fact that soulmates are defined by something greater and unknown, completely uncontrollable by the person in question, the stigma toward homosexuality still rots away in plenty parts of the world. Even the utmost truth of a person’s identity is thrown aside, considered a disgrace or punishment to their family, and believed to be somehow prayed away to whatever god controls when someone will see the sky in its natural blue.

Reki’s touch strengthens the fibers of every color Langa has come to see, like their connection is meant to be exercised.

He glances at the bare, open palm of his free hand laying on the desktop. The sliced rivene of that nasty cut has sealed up for the most part, and his stitches should be removed quite soon.

It’s still a burning red around the edges. He thinks of that cat’s claw that drew the first drops of blood he’d ever seen, and as Reki stirs awake, fingers curling closer, Langa wonders if seeing red somehow made it all easier.

Reki isn’t staring. He’s made sure of it since that nap, or at least when Langa finally woke up the other day. On the outside, their connection was anticlimactic, there were no heaving breaths and a great collide into each other, no smashing lips or one liners that would make a poet teary eyed. Just the sight of cool blue that matched the sky’s color just outside the sun’s glare, and his heartbeat absolutely _thundering_ from realization.

There’s no doubt it was Langa. Not only was the boy his best friend, but he was the _only_ one within reach at that moment. But Reki could’ve been in a suffocating crowd with Langa a mile away, and still have no doubt it was _him_.

He’d swallowed down nothing but anxiousness at that time. It was a complete opposite to the blissful oblivion on Langa’s relaxed face.

Reki has heard that fire turns blue at the tips of its flames when it grows especially hot; the feeling stirring in his chest could’ve rivaled that of a bonfire. Entirely blue, and the sting of it pressed into his lip as his teeth dug into its picked skin. Nearly all of his bedroom felt brand new, but the only thing his eyes could handle was a face right in front of him, and the strand of hair puffing from air that escaped between Langa’s agape lips.

Since then, Reki has practically glued himself to his friend’s company with the help of fast wheels from his skateboard and the soles of his sneakers.

_I wanna see blue again._

Not any other kind, it’s just Langa.

“You’re not telling me something,” Miya says inside the shop. His hair is still especially dark and contrasts the sheer green of his eyes. It matches his personality, honestly, since his kindness tends to hide behind a curtain of snark just the way his bangs dangle around his eyes.

“What am I not telling you?” Reki asks as he feigns innocence the best he can. He’s a great liar, it’s almost a shame, but somehow Miya sees right through like glass and Reki bets it’s because this kid does just the same.

“I don’t know that’s why I’m bringing it up, idiot.” Miya’s board dances under his feet as he hops between random tricks. “But I bet it’s about Langa,” he chirps, and the board clicks with it.

Reki schools his face as he picks away at the stickers stuck to the edge of the countertop. ‘ _Number 1!_ ’ it reads, the letters are bubbled like mini graffiti. “Well I’ve got nothing. He’s coming around soon, though.” He shrugs.

Miya doesn’t buy it. Instead he grounds his foot into the front of his board and flies to the counter.

“Tell me,” he says at the same time his hands latch onto the counter just across from Reki. He tilts his head, mouth curled, nothing but a sneaky little cat playing the poor part of a curious dog. Reki rolls his eyes.

“ _You_ tell _me_. I don’t know what you’re talking about!”

“Well I bet…” Miya props his cheek in one hand, the ribbon on his beret sways with it, “—you’re seeing color.”

Reki knows he fucking lost to this damn kid. He feels his eyes widen before he knows it, and it’s already a bad move to act skeptical but he does it anyway and lifts a brow. “What makes you think—“

“Nah I saw it,” Miya already says and his little finger points straight between Reki’s eyes. “It’s in your face, _hah!_ ”

He smacks his arm away. “I don’t care, there’s nothing to see.” _Just black and white_ , he tries thinking to himself, but this whole setting is shouting otherwise.

“Don’t act so surprised.” Miya scowls. “Everyone in _S_ already knows, maybe even your whole stupid school.” He slides back to the opposite wall of the shop, and his head stays facing away as he finishes smugly. “At least the fact that you’re soulmates.”

Reki says nothing. The shock bursts from his head down to the bottom of his spine.

“ _Hmmm_ ,” the kid continues nonchalantly. “Adam is trash anyway.”

_Adam_ , Reki thinks bitterly. _Acting like he’s god himself_. There’s no way he could even intervene, despite the off chance of a person having two soulmates, that man is nothing but disgusting and he can count on the fact that his— his _friend_ just gets a rise out of competition like some idiot ‘cause he apparently _loves_ having Reki worried sick over him.

_“If you do it again I’ll punch you,”_ he remembers saying just nearly a month ago. It was a half tease, his and Langa’s fingers were intertwined and pressed to either side of his head on the latter’s bed.

Langa loomed over him. _“Okay,”_ he’d replied simply, and Reki bonked his knee into Langa’s hip from where the boy was planted between his legs.

Lord help him, this crush had knocked him to the ground too many times. Reki is almost tired of falling for Langa (not really), he may as well make the floor his home at this point.

“He is, but the rest of this is bull,” Reki makes a half shot at faking it more but it doesn’t even land. Miya knows better.

“We’ll see at _S_ tonight.” Miya says ominously before pushing himself right out the door.

Reki bets that kid would call his soulmate a slime the first time they meet. He’s just that much of a shithead.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> sorry langa’s pov is noticeably shorter than reki’s i somehow can’t help myself 💀 the climax happens with him though, hopefully that makes up for it hfjsnffn

**Author's Note:**

> leave a comment & kudos and i will love you foreverrr <3
> 
> follow my [instagram](https://www.instagram.com/arcadevia/) to stay posted with sneak peeks of the next chapter (in my sk8 highlight) and any future works!


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